


Singing Hands, Happy Hands

by Rhidee



Series: Fighting For A Better Today [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Aunt Marmalade is now the name for taako and lups aunt, Autistic Lup, Love these damn twins, Lup centric, Taako has OCD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 05:13:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11982900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhidee/pseuds/Rhidee
Summary: A sort of companion fic for Song On Repeat, No Time To Eat but centered on stimming and my girl lup because we all need stimming positivity





	Singing Hands, Happy Hands

Lup has always had very busy hands. When she was scared or anxious, they jerked, fingers flexing, sometimes squeezing her hair. When she was happy, they buzzed, happy bees around her, fingers loose and free. When she was just processing, it was usually just a quick motion. Able to be passed off as a gesture in conversation. Reaching for something and then stopping, if not. Something she could hide.

She had to do a lot of hiding in her life.

Her feet were bouncy too.  Not as much, not as quick to move as her hands were.  When she was happy, they bounced her back and forth, or kicked in the air all content happy if she was sitting.  If she had a Very Bad Sensory, they'd jolt, twitching awkwardly and wanting to jog in place until the bad feeling was all out of her body and back outside where it belonged.

Lup was overall loud, in body and in sound.  And she liked it that way.  It just wasn't always safe to be that way.  Not when you don't have a place you can call home.  

Not after she left her aunts house.

 

\---

 

Living with her aunt was probably the best time of Lup's early life.  Aunt Marmalade was nice, and let Lup flap and kick and talk as much as she wanted.  She taught Taako how to cook, and helped Lup with her makeup.  The downside was the acting.

Aunt Marmalade had Taako and Lup pretend to be rich children, and sneak into the mansions and pool parties of the rich side of town, for free food and petty theft.  It wasn't actually bad, it was fun to play pretend and even funner to pull one over on some snobby old man, it was just hard to keep her body quiet for all that time.  She learned what she could get away with there.  Where you could tap your foot but had to keep your hands in your lap, when you could disguise a flap as a gesture.  Taako had more trouble.  He repeated things a lot more then, words coming up in his mind twice.  Sometimes his words got all mixed up, and he'd say at instead of and, mixing up all those short sounds that mean so much.  He got really good at making it into a funny thing instead of a sad thing, into making royalty and servants alike giggle at his jokes.

Lup was happy there, even with the occasional outing to some rich old farts mansion with five independent swimming pools and twenty fantasy elevators.  She managed to steal some rich dudes big hat, with the best texture she'd ever felt, and gave it to Taako.  Lup liked it, but she was always more of a movement stim type of person than a sensation stim like Taako.  Taako, who loved heavy blankets and soft feelings, and light lavender and warm breezes. 

Lup loved her brother, but that didn't do it for her.  She couldn't just stay still and take in the sensations.  She had to move them around, to wiggle in the sun and pat the soft blankets.  To wiggle her hands at the breeze and kick her feet in the grass.  Taako felt things, and then let them drip out of him like draining water.  Lup felt things, and splashed them out.

They balanced each other.  

Lups quick hands could rub on Taakos arms, and sooth him when he was tense.  If Lup was brooding quietly, Taako knew just where to poke to make her giggle and flap.  

Taako thrived in the kitchen, in the measuring and balance, in doing things perfectly exact but with a bit of flair.  Lup thrived outside, in motions not quite exact but that got the job done.  In climbing trees to pick apples and just barely managing to toss them into the bucket below.  She loved that.

They loved each other.  And they were safe there, and happy, with their aunt and a million opportunities ahead of them.

Nothing lasts forever.

 

\---

 

Bouncing around on the road was hard.  Harder than any fancy folk gala had ever been.  People didn't want noisy bodies to travel with them.  Couldn't stand quick jolts, hands flying around randomly.  Living life as a fight did that to you.  People had a hard time telling Lup's flaps from a threat.  

Taako faired better.  Washing his hands twice?  Just good hygiene.  Double checking the locks?  How nice to be protected.  When he got stuck, looping, Lup could quickly move him into a new way of doing the same thing.  She asked him about it once, about why that worked.

"Lulu, my brain gets all tripped up on things sometimes.  And if you keep tripping, what do you do?  You stop walking, start jumping.  You can't trip if you don't walk."

And Lup thought about that, reminded herself of that, when Taako was encouraged to sleep inside, and her strongly suggested to stay outside with the horses.  Taako would sneak out, hug her as her fingers twisted into patterns in the dark of night, the cold hay making the worst sensory on them both.

Even if they had nothing else, thank god they'd always have each other.

 

\---

 

When Lup stood, fingers twitching in her pockets as the world she grew up in was destroyed, she decided she was done caring about all that nonsense.  That the only one she really could trust was Taako, who had seen her at her worst, who would always be there no matter what.  She decided to focus on him, instead of all the places she'd seen that would no longer exist.  Of an empty cottage in a town that still had childrens paintings on the walls.  Of the very first dress Lup had ever gotten, lying forgotten in a store somewhere that no longer was.  Of Greg fucking Grimaldis and fifteen dollars that would never be returned, goddamn it Greg Grimaldis, this is why you pay off your debts before people go on big missions.

So she turned, made eye contact with her brother, and nodded.

They could do this shit.

 

\---

 

When Barry first saw Lup flapping, she had just figured out how to say a particularly hard word in Mongoose.  Something with a hint more hiss than elven throats are really meant to do.  Her ears twitched up, and her hands flapped around her, feet kicking soft on the bed and knocking her notes a bit.  Her joy jumping around her in every movement of her body, happy and making the air fill with her elation.

And then she froze.  

Looked back at Barry, who she had forgotten was there, and very firmly put her hands in her lap, fingers faintly twitching.  Still as she could possibly be.

And Barry smiled, big, blush soft on his face and his heart overwhelmed with love.  And he said, blunt and honest,

"That is the cutest thing i've ever seen, hot diggity shit."

And Lup practically glowed, eyes crinkling from the biggest smile Barry'd ever seen on her face, and jumped on him, hugging him tight.  And smushed on him, snorting with laughter and so, so happy.

All the while, her happy hands buzzing behind him.

 

\---

 

The thing about being trapped in an umbrella as a lich is that you stop feeling things all the way.  That there's no more blood in your veins, to swing around with your hands.  No beating heart.  No breathing lungs.

She'd been a lich before, of course.  But before, there was so much to see.  To look at.  To experiment with.  How moving through different things felt every so slightly different.  

But there was no sensation in the umbrastaff.  And after she had become fully, finally, consistently aware.  It drove her insane.

Until one day, she felt a hand on the umbra staff.  And, no, that would Not do.  Merle was a bad sensory, right now, all wrong and callused hands.  Not soft with lotion.  Not Taako.

Until it was.  And she relaxed.  Because she had her brother again.  The most important person she'd ever known.  And she was safe.

Nothing lasts forever, after all.

 

\---

 

She stood, phantasmal and resplendent, basking in the sensation of absolutely fucking destroying some tendrils.  And she turns, hands flapping with joy and flames swirling around her.  And she looks at Taako, her brother, the one salvation through all those years as an umbrella, and says the first thing she can think of.

"You're dating the grim reaper?!"

 

\---

 

And then, safe in the future, Lup sat with Angus.  They were instant friends.  They smiled, and their hands made maps of an endless future between them.  Angus leaned forward, telling Lup intensely about how amazing the new Caleb Cleveland book was, and how he was going to detective just like that, and Lup felt nothing but awe.  Because he was her family.  This rowdy smartass kid whose special interest was detective'ing.  Who listened happily and didn't look in her eyes and make it all uncomfortable, and who was just so, so great.  

And she hugged him, making sure to do it slow enough he knew he could move back, but he just leaned forward more and smushed into her arms and giggled, happy and free.  Like Lup was once.  Like she thought, maybe, she could be now.

Then, Merle, ever the charismatic, let loose the biggest, stankiest toot the world had ever seen.  Lup and Angus let out a big eww, giggled, and ran away from the smelly dwarf dude they both knew and loved.

Angus thought, quietly to himself, that the next detective mystery he should solve is the mystery of whatever the hell Merle'd been eating.  After he had fun with his auntie Lup, though.  

They had time

**Author's Note:**

> YO reminder that if you stim, you're cute and great. Just by virtue of stimming you're fantastic. I'm so happy you get to move all of the joy around when you feel it, and so glad you have something to sooth the hurt when you feel it. Stim on dudes.


End file.
